Mala in Cuba

Brownswood;
2012

Find it at:

"I was totally out of my element, but you have to do these things in life to change and grow, to learn about yourself and to learn about other people as well... I don't know if I can even work with these [Cuban musicians] because they're on a totally different level musically, and I feel so inferior, but then you play them something of yours, and it's not that they feel the same exactly, but they don't know how you created what you created. So you're both in an unknown, so to speak."—Mala, to FACT, on the origin of his debut LP.

On the new album Mala in Cuba,the dubstep pioneer sets himself to an ambitious task. Challenged by musical sage Gilles Peterson to mix soundsystem culture with the traditional melodies and instruments of Cuban music, Mala traveled to Havana to retrieve those sounds from their source, on a kind of musico-anthropological expedition. And though the album doesn't work in many places, it's a laudable attempt to mix together two styles which are, at first appearance, utterly alien to one another.

If anyone has earned the right to try his hand at bringing such disparate worlds together, it's Mala. The man is to dubstep what Primo is to boom-bap: a living legend with as much influence as any single artist in defining a beloved sound. The difference between the two producers, and the reason that LP-devotees haven't heard of Mala, is that dubstep, as a dance genre, is powered by the single. Mala's never even released a full length record before-- only singles and dubplates.

That this is Mala's first proper album is a key to the record's problems-- he's mentioned in past interviews that he's uncomfortable working within the confines of the long player. He's not used to making separate tracks cohere to each other, and the discordance between songs on the album makes for transitions that are less seamless than they ought to be.

For instance, take the first two songs released from the album about a month and a half ago. The B-side, "Calle F", is a wonderful makeshift jam session, bringing together driving bass with keys and snappy Cuban snares. It's highly atmospheric with huge amounts of space to complete the vibe. On the other hand, the A-side, "Cuba Electronic", is dark and dense, with a grating automated sampled bark that adds to a general urban dissonance.

Fans of exotic musical collages like Madlib's Speto de Rua-- Dirty Brasilian Crates Volume One or Frankie P's Hazy Nights in the Heights will enjoy the former. Fans of Kode 9 and Skream will enjoy the latter. It would take a hell of a broad taste range to enjoy both, and even a listener with that eclectic a sensibility would have a hard time listening to "Cuba Electronic" and "Calle F" back to back. Though both are examples of extraordinary musicianship, they just don't work together.

Mala had only one request of his coworkers. He asked Cuban jazz pianist Roberto Fonseca, his talented band, and other Cuban collaborators to play their music at his favorite tempo, the traditional 140 BPM. The producer then took those sounds home (apparently leaving the country with "a hard drive's worth of music") and toyed around with the samples for months on end, eventually bringing in his trusted friend Simbad to help validate his work. But unfortunately, in the process of sculpting tracks, Mala couldn't seem to decide which part of the album's title to honor. Most of the tracks here are forced to pick sides between "Mala" and "in Cuba."

"The Tourist" is a slightly distorted version of a son montuno, a subgenre of Cuban folk much admired for the way it swirls together the cooperative strings of bass guitar and piano. And even though we know that Mala is behind the boards, he never seems willing to enter the fray. The opposite is true on "The Tunnel" where the upbeat Havana drums at the bottom of the mix are completely overwhelmed by blaring synth, rendering their presence entirely moot.

However, there are a few tracks on which Mala gets the mix exactly right. "Change" is one of these, a heady brew of spacious keyboards, dubstep thump, and beautiful Cuban brass. "Changuito", which features and is named after the OG Cuban percussionist finds the two drum masters riffing off one another in a thrilling exhibition, two hyperbolic talents at play. And "Ghost", perhaps best of all, maintains the purity of Cuban handclaps and vocal exhortations while slowly blending in the ominous clouds of that weaponized DMZ sound.

But these rare cohesive exceptions highlight the larger problem with the majority of the album. That Mala frequently eclipses his collaborators here is no surprise-- after all, this isa Mala album. That they eclipse him the other half of the time is a good thing, too-- a sign that he's humble enough to let others take the lead. But when two admirable entities participate in a collaborative project, you expect to see two pairs of handprints pressed firmly into the concrete of the finished work. And too often here, one pair is missing, hovering just out of sight and leaving behind only the trace imprint of a couple of fingertips, a contribution so slight that it's barely even there.